86 - SEGALEN (VICTOR)

SEGALEN (VICTOR) Stèles. Pei-King, published by Pei-T'ang Press, 1912. Volume in folio (288 x 142 mm), accordion-bound, 106 pp. (including the first 2 and last 3 blank endpapers), cream-colored paper cover (title label missing), the whole bound in two blue marbled paper cardboard boards with a printed title label, held together by leather straps. Genuine first edition, from a limited, non-commercial print run of only 286 copies. Copy No. 271 on vellum. “An ordinary print run was made on parchment-style vellum. The numbering continues beyond the 81 copies justified as ‘Korea.’ […] It seems unlikely that the figure of 200 copies (mentioned in a letter from the author) was ever reached. Only an examination of the numbers of the copies that booksellers or collectors might encounter or acquire will one day settle this bibliophilic detail.”, Jean Loize, “From Tahiti to Tibet: The Stopovers and Treasures of the Poet Victor Segalen (1878– 1919),” 1944. Would this thus prove the point?... Printed on the Lazarist presses in Beijing in May and June 1912, and published on August 13, 1912, this first edition is the only one corrected in Segalen’s own hand; unlike the second edition, whose printing he was, to his regret, unable to oversee, as it proceeded too quickly for his liking. Complete with the three hand-stamped “cinnabar” red seals at the beginning and end of the volume. (See Henri Bouillier, in *En Français dans le texte*, Bnf, 1998, no. 340).